Posted on 12/08/2011 7:08:42 PM PST by rzman21
I don’t share the author’s inerrantist polemic, but I believe the Septuagint should be authoritative for all Christians when it comes to the Old Testament.
Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians still consider the Septuagint authoritative.
Bump
“books for more than 2,000 years without infusing significant error into the texts. That being too much for some to accept, the inerrancy doctrine lost a lot of followers. “
Went off the tracks with a failure to understand what inerrancy means.
Presuppose away. As for me, the text of the Bible as we have it is the word of God as He has preserved it. Jesus Himself said:
"Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." (Matthew 24:35)
Those words are also recorded in Mark 13:31 and Luke 21:33.
To paraphrase Joshua, "Choose you what you will believe. As for me I will believe the Lord."
Yes, it may correctly be said that my viewpoint is neither scientific nor scholarly. But neither is the opposing viewpoint. Both are based upon certain presuppositions, or as some may say, faith.
Why do philosophers wear long robes? Because their feet are not planted upon solid ground.
While the author of this piece is most concise in his efforts to discredit the accuracy of scripture, he has yet to illustrate any substantive difference in the conveyed meaning of the various text.
That’s not the point. Jeremiah in the Massoretic texts used by Protestants is longer than the older versions, which calls into question the Jewish/Protestant version of Jeremiah.
St. Justin the Martyr writes in the 2nd century that the Jews falsified their scriptures to discredit Christianity.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/01286.htm
I stand with the earliest Christians who set the Septuagint as the norm of their faith.
Material is usually added to texts, not subtracted.
St. Justin testifies in his Dialogue with Trypho:
Chapter 72. Passages have been removed by the Jews from Esdras and Jeremiah
Justin: I shall do as you please. From the statements, then, which Esdras made in reference to the law of the passover, they have taken away the following: ‘And Esdras said to the people, This passover is our Saviour and our refuge. And if you have understood, and your heart has taken it in, that we shall humble Him on a standard, and thereafter hope in Him, then this place shall not be forsaken for ever, says the God of hosts. But if you will not believe Him, and will not listen to His declaration, you shall be a laughing-stock to the nations.’ And from the sayings of Jeremiah they have cut out the following: ‘I [was] like a lamb that is brought to the slaughter: they devised a device against me, saying, Come, let us lay on wood on His bread, and let us blot Him out from the land of the living; and His name shall no more be remembered.’ Jeremiah 11:19 And since this passage from the sayings of Jeremiah is still written in some copies [of the Scriptures] in the synagogues of the Jews (for it is only a short time since they were cut out), and since from these words it is demonstrated that the Jews deliberated about the Christ Himself, to crucify and put Him to death, He Himself is both declared to be led as a sheep to the slaughter, as was predicted by Isaiah, and is here represented as a harmless lamb; but being in a difficulty about them, they give themselves over to blasphemy. And again, from the sayings of the same Jeremiah these have been cut out: ‘The Lord God remembered His dead people of Israel who lay in the graves; and He descended to preach to them His own salvation.’
“The presupposition here is that the Qumran texts are indeed accurate, that they provide a standard by which to judge other texts.”
Good catch.
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It has always been a mystery to me why protestants are so insistent that the Masorete, the earliest extant manuscript of which dates to the 10th century, and which was transmitted by Christ-denying rabbis who had an anti-Christian interest in selecting which ancient manuscripts were authoritative (traditionally held by Christians to have taken place at a rabbinic council at Jamnia in 90 A.D., but perhaps more diffusely after the destruction of the Temple), and in inserting vowel points to fix the meanings of words (for instance, the same consonants make Nazarene and Nazarite in Hebrew), is to be preferred over the Septuagint, which the Evangelists and Apostles used, and for which we have manuscripts dating back to the second century.
I realize the simple argument is that the now lost ur-text was in Hebrew. But the translation into Greek by faithful Israelites as yet anticipating the Messiah seems to me less likely to have corrupted the text than transmission in the original Hebrew by those with an interest in denying Christ.
Suppose I made a copy of the bible at home, by hand. Or somehow a few bytes got corrupted on my hard drive in the file that contained the bible.
The doctrine that the bible is the inspired word of God, and transmitted through the ages without serious flaw does not apply to every copy. God himself will not stop my mis-management of the scriptures.
What God will do, is make sure that his Word will never pass away, and the his truth cannot be hidden. Is every jot and title accurate? Hardly so, in fact, it may be impossible to tell which is the correct grammar. However, it’s NOT possible to mis-undertand God’s word, even with the mispellings or typos or occasional change (which can be backed out).
God has created a entire creation that testifies to his truth, his power, and his nature (Romans 1:20). The only way to hide this truth would be to destroy the creation. Even Satan cannot do this, so he has to content himself to try to corrupt it. God has saved the creation (though Christ Jesus), and can/has/will save his Word through the testimony of the Holy Spirit.
To say we can’t believe the bible because someone, sometime might have mis-copied it is the height of stupidity and is not logical.
Exactly. Nobody ever seems to objectively examine their own assumptions.
I agree with you. But could you please explain what you meant when you said misspellings, typos, and occasional change, which can be backed out. Backed out?
Bookmark;read only, later.
As if this wasn’t enough vindication for the Septuagint...
Jesus quotes the distinctively septuagint version of the old testament 10 times as often as the masoretic version.
The odd thing is that bad texts are usually the oldest ones found, but the best texts are usually the ones copied. Scrolls scrub themselves as they are rolled and unrolled, and so a constant effort is needed to keep the good texts in use. Bad texts tend to be written by ‘novices’ and then set aside, not used, and can be very old. Example of a bad text might be the Gospel of Peter round last century. An example of a good text saved might be the dead sea scrolls, which were probably good texts that were hidden from the Romans.
The odd thing is that bad texts are usually the oldest ones found, but the best texts are usually the ones copied. Scrolls scrub themselves as they are rolled and unrolled, and so a constant effort is needed to keep the good texts in use. Bad texts tend to be written by ‘novices’ and then set aside, not used, and can be very old. Example of a bad text might be the Gospel of Peter round last century. An example of a good text saved might be the dead sea scrolls, which were probably good texts that were hidden from the Romans.
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